Donald Katz

My third semester at Georgia Tech was primarily focused on completing my Master’s thesis, so although I had a small course load, there were many long nights spent in the office writing. Still, my courses this semester had many interesting moments, and below are some of the course outputs.

I’ve uploaded one paper and two online pieces of writing that I wrote this semester to my Writings section. First, my term paper from Urban Geography, a course I took at Georgia State University. This paper branched off from my graduate research, and was an exploration into the concept of world cities. I did a small study on how Atlanta compares to other U.S. world cities in terms of air flows and connectivity. I’ve also posted links to my work in my Traffic Flow Theory course. The course professor, Dr. Jorge Laval, asked us to expand the body of knowledge on wikipedia on traffic flow theory by choosing a topic of interest in the course and create a wikipedia page. I chose the common assumption of vertical queues and the fascinating method of the Newell-Daganzo merge model.

My first paper has been officially published, and is listed on the Transportation Research Board’s website. The paper “Levels of Overcrowding in Bus System of Dhaka, Bangladesh“, was published in Transportation Research Record 2143 on pages 85-91. I am wondering if I will receive a hard copy of the journal. I uploaded the pre-publication copy to the Writings section. Below is a screenshot of the start of the paper as it it appears in the journal.

On Tuesday I underwent the second of three steps to becoming a Ph.D candidate in my department. The first step, the written comprehensive exam I passed in May. This second step was an oral presentation in front of my Examination Committee, made up of four professors in my department, on my topic of research. I framed my presentation to be about five key points I learned during my Master’s research on airports in megaregions, and a discussion on what can be done in regards to my future dissertation. I presented, with intermittent questions from my committee, for just over 80 minutes. At the end of another question period and asking me to leave the room, I was allowed back in. They then informed me I had passed.

This exercise was good to frame my thoughts on my research so far, and to gather their feedback in a formal setting. My whole committee discussed with me their thoughts on the direction they think the dissertation will go. Over the next semester, I will frame a project proposal, and present this proposal (hopefully in May 2011) as the final step in my process to become a Ph.D candidate.

This past Friday, I graduated with a Master’s in Civil Engineering from Georgia Tech. The ceremony was held at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum for all Master’s and Ph.D graduates, and my family came into town to see me receive my degree. The graduation speaker was Andrew Young, former ambassador to the United Nations and U.S. Congressman. Hopefully two years from now I will be back in the same building receiving my Ph.D.

Fulbright posted on their Facebook page earlier today the video interview conducted with me, which was recorded last year. For their post, they used the video as an alert to applicants that they have 38 days remaining until the application is due for 2011-2012.

I have started my second year at Georgia Tech, and this semester I will finish my thesis to complete my Master’s degree. My research on megaregions and airports is continuing well and I am currently writing up on the results I have produced over the summer. Dr. Michael Meyer and Dr. Laurie Garrow are helping me along through my thesis writing. In addition, I am still moving ahead with my research on Bangladesh buses with Dr. Garrow, adding new elements to the study as we aim to publish next year.

This semester I am taking the following courses.  They are listed below along with the instructors’ names.

CEE 6636 - Traffic Flow Theory (Dr. Jorge Laval)
GEOG 6674 - Urban Geography (Dr. Katherine Hankins)

My Urban Geography course is at Georgia State University, which I have cross-registered with for this semester. Twice a week I take MARTA to downtown Atlanta for the lecture on GSU’s campus.

These past two weeks I visited Lisbon, Portugal for the 12th World Conference on Transport Research. I attended the conference along with my advisor Dr. Michael Meyer and fellow Ph.D student J.P. O’Har. The conference, with over 1500 attendees, was held at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa along the Tagus River. One of the highlights of this venue was its location just beside the 25 de Abril Bridge, a double decker suspension bridge with vehicle traffic above and commuter rail below (see photo).

During the conference I attended many sessions on airports and aviation, traveler behavior, and urban transport modes. I made a few contacts who were interested in my Bangladeshi bus project. The conference was elaborate, topped off with a gala dinner at the Pavilhão Atlântico within the park formerly used for the World Expo ‘98.

As part of the trip to Lisbon, the three of us traveled to Madrid and the Galicia region of Spain before the conference, before taking Portugal’s high-speed rail line (similar to the Acela) down to Lisbon.

Earlier this month I visited Helsinki, Finland for the annual Helsinki Summer School in Transportation. This summer workshop is held at Aalto University School of Science and Technology. It is organized by Dr. Antti Talvitie, a professor at Aalto University, and Dr. Shinya Kikuchi, a professor at Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region campus. This year’s theme was “Reason Building for Decision-Making in the Transport Sector”, and from June 7 to June 11 we heard a variety of lectures and had discussions on topics of uncertainty, risk analysis, transport policy, and transport administration.

During my stay, I slept at a hostel in downtown Helsinki and took a regional bus to the Otaniemi campus in the city of Espoo. The other workshop participants included two other Americans and students and professionals from the United Kingdom, Spain, Finland, Morocco, Japan, Denmark, Belgium, and Italy. One of highlights of the week was a visit to the Port of Helsinki, located at Vuosaari Harbor. The picture below is from the visit.

During my stay I had time to explore the city of Helsinki, Nuuksio National Park about one hour outside the city, and take a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia for a day. Perhaps what was very special about the trip was experiencing Helsinki’s multimodal transit system. In one week I was able to travel by regional bus, city bus, tram, metro transit, regional train, intercity ferry, and regional ferry; all but the intercity ferry required only one integrated transit card.

A fellow student in my department who recently earned a Fulbright Scholarship pointed out to me the back cover of his recently received orientation booklet. There were two color photographs on the back, and one was of me pedaling a rickshaw in Dhaka in 2008. It was taken during my parents’ visit while on the Fulbright. That picture which is being used on this year’s booklet is shown below.